Length
How many pages is 1,000 words?
Two pages single-spaced, four double-spaced — at 12pt Times New Roman with one-inch margins. Change any of those and the answer moves a long way.
Every answer to this question is a range, and anyone giving you a single number has quietly fixed four variables you did not agree to. Font, point size, line spacing and margins each move the result, and together they can nearly double it. So here are the standard assumptions, followed by the tables, followed by the things that will wreck them.
The standard assumptions
Unless a brief says otherwise, the default that most academic and professional writing assumes is: 12pt Times New Roman, one-inch (2.54cm) margins, US Letter or A4. On those settings, a full page of continuous prose holds roughly 500 words single-spaced or 250 words double-spaced.
Those two figures are the whole of the arithmetic. Everything below is derived from them.
Words to pages
| Words | Single-spaced | 1.5 spacing | Double-spaced |
|---|---|---|---|
| 250 | ½ page | ¾ page | 1 page |
| 500 | 1 page | 1½ pages | 2 pages |
| 750 | 1½ pages | 2 pages | 3 pages |
| 1,000 | 2 pages | 3 pages | 4 pages |
| 1,500 | 3 pages | 4½ pages | 6 pages |
| 2,000 | 4 pages | 6 pages | 8 pages |
| 2,500 | 5 pages | 7½ pages | 10 pages |
| 3,000 | 6 pages | 9 pages | 12 pages |
| 4,000 | 8 pages | 12 pages | 16 pages |
| 5,000 | 10 pages | 15 pages | 20 pages |
| 7,500 | 15 pages | 22½ pages | 30 pages |
| 10,000 | 20 pages | 30 pages | 40 pages |
Pages to words
| Pages | Single-spaced | Double-spaced |
|---|---|---|
| 1 page | 500 words | 250 words |
| 2 pages | 1,000 words | 500 words |
| 3 pages | 1,500 words | 750 words |
| 5 pages | 2,500 words | 1,250 words |
| 8 pages | 4,000 words | 2,000 words |
| 10 pages | 5,000 words | 2,500 words |
| 15 pages | 7,500 words | 3,750 words |
| 20 pages | 10,000 words | 5,000 words |
| 50 pages | 25,000 words | 12,500 words |
| 100 pages | 50,000 words | 25,000 words |
The font changes the answer more than you expect
Point size measures the height of the type body, not its width, so two faces at the same nominal size can differ enormously in how much horizontal space they consume. Rough multipliers against 12pt Times New Roman, for the same word count:
| Font at 12pt | Pages relative to Times | Words per single-spaced page |
|---|---|---|
| Times New Roman | 1.00× | ~500 |
| Garamond | 0.92× | ~545 |
| Cambria | 1.05× | ~475 |
| Calibri | 1.06× | ~470 |
| Georgia | 1.12× | ~445 |
| Arial / Helvetica | 1.10× | ~455 |
| Courier New | 1.35× | ~370 |
| Verdana | 1.25× | ~400 |
Courier is the outlier for a historical reason: it is monospaced, so a narrow i occupies exactly as much room as a wide m. That is why screenplay format is specified in 12pt Courier and why the one-page-per-minute rule of thumb works — the format was chosen precisely so that page count would be a reliable proxy for running time.
What breaks the tables
The figures above assume continuous prose. Real documents are not continuous prose, and each of these will pull your actual page count away from the estimate:
- Headings and subheadings. A heading plus its space above and below eats three or four lines and contributes about four words.
- Space between paragraphs. A 6pt or 10pt gap after each paragraph adds up fast in a document with short paragraphs.
- Block quotes. Indented and often single-spaced inside a double-spaced document, so they are denser than the surrounding text.
- Dialogue. Every change of speaker is a new paragraph, and most lines of dialogue are short. Fiction with heavy dialogue can run at 150 words per double-spaced page against the 250 the table predicts.
- Figures, tables and captions. Enormous vertical cost, negligible word cost.
- References. A bibliography is dense, hanging-indented, and usually excluded from the word count but included in the page count.
Manuscript pages are a different unit
Publishing has its own convention, and it is not the same as the one above. A standard manuscript page is 12pt Courier or Times, double-spaced, one-inch margins, and is counted as 250 words regardless of what is actually on it — a page with three lines of dialogue still counts as 250. That is why a novel's length is always given in words rather than pages: it is the only figure that survives the trip from manuscript to typeset book, where the same text might occupy 280 pages in hardback and 400 in a mass-market paperback.
The practical advice
If your brief specifies words, write to the words and never think about pages. If it specifies pages, ask what settings they assume — and if nobody can tell you, use 12pt Times New Roman, double-spaced, one-inch margins, because that is what the person setting the assignment almost certainly had in mind. Then paste your draft into the word counter, take the word count, and use the tables above to check that you are in the right neighbourhood before you spend an evening on formatting.
Common questions
How many pages is 1,000 words?
About 2 pages single-spaced or 4 pages double-spaced, in 12pt Times New Roman with one-inch margins. In 12pt Arial the same text runs roughly 10 per cent longer, because Arial is a wider face at the same nominal size.
How many words is one page?
Around 500 words single-spaced or 250 double-spaced, in 12pt Times New Roman with one-inch margins. Dialogue-heavy fiction runs far fewer, because every new speaker starts a new line.
How many pages is a 500-word essay?
One page single-spaced, two pages double-spaced, at the standard settings above. Most 500-word assignments expect double spacing unless told otherwise.
Does the font really change the page count?
Substantially. At the same point size, Times New Roman is the most compact of the common faces, Calibri sits in the middle, and Arial and Verdana are noticeably wider. The gap between Times and Verdana is around 25 per cent on a long document.
Why does my document have fewer words per page than the table says?
Headings, block quotes, figures, tables, bullet lists and paragraph spacing all consume vertical space without adding many words. A page with a heading and two short lists on it may hold half the words of a page of solid prose.
Should I submit to a word count or a page count?
If the brief gives a word count, use the word count, and let the page count fall where it falls. Page counts are proxies for length that break the moment anyone changes a margin, which is why most institutions moved away from them.